Stuck in the Elevator with You
by punchfacechampion
Summary: Danny and Mindy get stuck in an elevator. Smut eventually ensues. MA


**Very MA for language and some sexually explicit stuffs **

**First try posting something, hopefully you guys like it! The title is from "Stuck in the Middle with You" by Stealers Wheel**

**— **

**— **

**— **

When five o' clock rolled around, Danny was beyond ready to go home. It had been a long day and he wanted to lie back on his couch with a cold beer or two.

Instead he stood in front of an impossibly slow elevator, wishing he would've just taken the stairs. Mindy was at his left, studying her phone, clearly unperturbed by the wait. For some reason that annoyed him.

He stabbed the call button violently a few times.

"Danny calm down," Mindy commanded, not looking up.

He folded his arms across his chest with a grunt. "Why is there a down button if it doesn't bring down the elevator?"

"What are you in such a hurry for? Hot date tonight? Or is Ghost Hunters on?"

He cringed. She had laughed for a full minute when she walked in on him watching that show in the break room, and he had spent the next ten explaining that his eyes were closed because he was _tired_, not _scared_.

"It's five. I just want to go home."

Before she could retort there was a loud ding and the metal doors in front of them slid open.

"Finally!" He threw his arms up and rushed inside as Mindy unhurriedly tucked her phone into her purse and followed.

He pressed the main floor button and they both leaned against the rear wall.

There was an instrumental jazz number coming through the speakers at a volume ten notches too high. _Ugh_.  
Danny closed his eyes and tried to fend off a looming migraine. He didn't hate jazz, but nothing could ruin a solid piece of music more than hearing it fifty times a day.

They were barely a minute into the ride when the elevator car jerked to a stop suddenly.

"Shit!"

"Oh my god!"

They grabbed the safety railing behind them as the lights flickered then went out, and the music stopped.

Danny tried to spot Mindy in the darkness. "Mindy? You okay?"

"No!"

"Don't panic. Give it a minute, maybe it's just a glitch."

They waited in silence for all of ten seconds.

"We're not moving, Danny!"

He ran his hands along the wall until he found the control panel, and hit all the buttons, hoping one was the alarm.

"What are we going to do?" Mindy panicked.

"Relax. Look, I set off the alarm. I think. They know we're in here, everything's going to be fine."

"Until the cable snaps and we go flying to our deaths at a thousand feet per minute!"

"That's not going to happen," he insisted. "This kind of thing goes on all the time. They'll just flip a switch and we'll start moving again."

They waited in silence for a few minutes.

Just when Mindy was about to try calling Jeremy, a muffled voice came through the speakers, sounding maybe a little more chipper than the circumstances warranted. "_Yeah, howdy. Is everything alright in there?_"

Danny fumbled around with the buttons for a while again before finding the one that let him respond. He explained the situation.

"_Hang tight, folks, we'll have you down in a jiffy."_

Mindy groaned. "Oh my god we're at the mercy of Jed Clampett."

Danny returned to his spot against the back wall and slid down it to a seated position.

She mimicked the action and sighed. "At least the music stopped."

—

Ten minutes passed and the temperature must have risen fifteen degrees. They both shrugged their coats off and tossed them to the corner.

"This sucks," Mindy observed.

Danny nodded.

"At least we know they're working on it, though."

He nodded again.

"Danny?" She looked over at him. "You have to say something so I know you're listening."

"What else would I be doing?"

"I can't see your face. You could be sleeping."

She pulled her phone out of her purse and shined the screen right at him.

"Are you trying to blind me?"

"I need to see your expressions!"

He grabbed it and held it behind his back, out of her reaching grasp.

"Give it back!"

"Stop. Look, we'll put it on the floor, okay?"

He set it face-up on the carpet between them.

Their eyes had adjusted to the dark, so the tiny screen gave just enough illumination for them to see each other.

"Fine," she agreed.

Danny noticed that she was wearing a short, navy blue dress instead of the skirt-suit she had on earlier. "Going out tonight?"

"Yeah." She looked down at her lap and smoothed her hands over her tights-covered legs. "I figure I have to get back on the horse at some point right? His name is Jeff. He's a real estate agent."

Danny nodded, and went back to staring at his shoes.

It had only been a week since Mindy called things off with the pastor, but of course she would immediately 'get back on the horse.' She was nothing if not driven about her romantic life. She would probably have another boyfriend by the end of the summer.

Why did that thought bother him so much?

–

The temperature seemed to continue rising inside the metal box and it didn't take long before they were both slipping out of their footwear.  
Danny tossed his loafers on top of his jacket while Mindy rid herself of her calf-high boots.

They settled against the wall again.

The light from her phone would shut off every fifteen seconds, but they had gotten pretty good at bumping it one second before so it stayed lit.

"Hey," Mindy nudged his side with her elbow. "Truth or dare?"

He blinked at her. "What?"

"Truth or dare. It's a game."

He scoffed. Ten minutes ago she was freaking out, now she wanted party games. "I know what it is. We're not playing it."

She crossed her arms and frowned. "Why not?"

"We're not twelve year old girls at a sleeping party."

"It's _slumber_ party, Danny. God, you're so uptight."

He shook his head. "Whatever."

"I'm going to call you Gloomy Gus."

"Mindy…"

"How about Downer Danny?"

He finally gave a sigh of resignation when she started humming the Grinch song. "Okay! Fine. Truth."

She tapped her chin thoughtfully, like she was trying to come up with a question, but if Danny knew her at all she'd had one planned for the last five minutes.

"Did you sleep with Shauna?"

He frowned. "No. Why would you think that?"

"She had a thing for you."

"Really? Huh."

"You didn't know?"

"Nope. I can't blame her though." He flexed his forearms and glanced down at them, then back at Mindy to make sure she saw.

She did, and rolled her eyes. "Alright, take it easy. You're no Cena."

Of course she would deny it, but Danny noticed the way she appreciated his form when he did pull-ups or push-ups at the office. He scoffed.

She narrowed her eyes. "What? What was that sound?"

"Come on." He shrugged. "We both know how you look at me."

It was her turn to scoff: loudly, and twice. "Excuse me? _Conceited_ much?"

"Relax. I'm just saying…"

"First of all, _ew_. Secondly, _you_ are the one who's into _me_, Castellano. You stare at my ass every time I leave a room."

Danny threw his palms up and sputtered.

"Exactly," she said matter-of-factly, and pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. "Truth or dare?"

He exhaled loudly. "I don't care. Dare."

"Ooh, going right for the good one. Okay, um…I dare you to...sing something!"

"No."

"You can't say no. This is the game, you picked dare."

"I don't sing."

She held up a finger at him accusingly. "That's a lie, buddy. I've heard you sing!"

"No you haven't."

"When you play piano at the office."

"Prove it."

"You're no fun," she whined, and leaned her head back against the wall.

He bit back a smile. He would never tell her, but it was kind of cute when she pouted. "Truth or dare?"

"Truth."

There was one question that he probably wouldn't be able to ask under any other circumstances. That he was dying to know the answer to. "Why didn't you go to Haiti?"

Mindy had just sauntered in to work the Monday after she was supposed to leave, casually announcing that she missed her flight.  
Instead of spending hours gossiping about every last detail, the way she usually did with _everything_, she tucked herself away in her office and evaded questions until people stopped asking.

"That's not a truth or dare question, man," she told Danny. "You're supposed to ask like _'what's the craziest thing you did in College?'_ or_ 'how old were you when you first got laid?'_"

He just raised his eyebrows expectantly. She wasn't going to get out of answering this one.

She ran her fingers along the carpet. "Casey and I... We wanted different lives."

"You didn't want to do the Haiti thing?"

"It was more than that. His _heart_ was in Haiti, and mine is here."

Danny nodded. It made sense; relationships based on one person changing for the other rarely work out — just look at him and Christina.  
Still, somehow it was a disappointing answer. Maybe secretly, narcissistically, he wanted her to say it had something to do with the practice...or a certain coworker at the practice.

"And let's not forget, he basically told me I had to get assaulted at a woman's prison so I would be as _benevolent _as him," Mindy remembered.

Danny thought about correcting her, because that wasn't exactly what happened, but he figured it would be easier to let it go. "Huh."

She frowned at his laconic reply. "What? Do you think...do you wish I would've went?"

"No," he quickly clarified. "I think you made the right choice."

"Thanks, man. Okay, truth or dare?"

He took a deep breath and shook his head. "This is a stupid game."

"Hey! It's a classic! We used to play this all the time as kids."

"We?"

"People from my generation," she teased, poking his side.

He smirked.

"Let me guess, your favorite pastime was making corn husk dolls, huh?" She grinned and went from poking to playfully punching his side.

"Hey! Don't hit me!" he laughed, and grabbed her fist.

She relented, and they both sat back again.

"It's been way more than a jiffy," she pointed out with a sigh.

"They'll get us out soon."

—

Mindy was on the phone with Gwen. Their conversation had been going strong for about ten minutes and it didn't seem likely to end anytime soon.

They spent a ridiculous amount of time arguing the practicality of chocolate flavored wine, before moving on to _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_ spin-offs that never happened; it was about as captivating as it sounds.

Eventually another person was brought into the discussion via three-way calling, and at some point Mindy rose from her spot on the floor and started pacing.

Danny watched more than listened. The phone, which she had on speaker and was holding out in front of her face, lit up every expression.  
Her eyes did this thing where they went sideways-crescent when she smiled. It made him think of that Bing Crosby cover, of the song about Irish eyes.

_'When Irish eyes are smiling, sure they steal your heart away.' _

He also noticed that she waved her arms around a lot when she was getting frustrated. Like now.

"We all know he was fabulous. I'm saying he couldn't carry a whole show, is what I'm saying!" she exclaimed.

Danny smirked. She could probably get passionate about a box of crispix, which was both infuriating and endearing.

Sometimes, like now, it was much more endearing.

God he needed to get out of that elevator.

**—**

"Danny can I ask you something?"

_Oh, shit_. Whenever Mindy prefaced a question with that it was sure to get interesting.

"I...guess," he answered hesitantly.

"Why did you and Christina break up?"

He groaned. "Come on."

"Hey! You started it. I think I should get an answer too."

"Remember how you said you and Casey were too different? Well, us too," he said, nice and concise, hoping that would be enough of an answer. Knowing it wouldn't because this was Mindy.

"Like how?" she pressed.

"Lots of ways. She has all these dreams and plans, and I don't see myself in them." Their relationship was actually a _lot_ like Mindy and Casey's, Danny realized. "She didn't even want to live here, in New York."

"What? Where did she want to live?"

"LA."

Mindy shook her head. "You would hate LA. Their subway system is just...it's disgraceful."

"Yup."

"So, your differences...is that why you got divorced too? I mean, aside from the cheating thing."

Danny shrugged, feeling only half as uncomfortable as he should have been. He didn't make a habit of talking about his personal life, but it seemed like when he did it was with Mindy.

"Not really. We've changed a lot since then — it's different."

"I guess."

"I want her to be happy. She wouldn't be happy with me," he concluded.

Mindy patted his arm. "I'm sorry."

He met her eyes and gave a small smile. "I'm not."

—

_Pop. Pop. Whee! *Crash* Pop. Pop. Pop. _

The stream of increasingly annoying sounds was coming from Mindy's iPhone, interrupted only by her occasional "Yes! Finally."

_*Crash*_ _Pop_._ Pop. Pop. _

Danny ignored it for as long as he could: a total of about three minutes.

Finally he leaned his head over her shoulder and peeked down at the phone in her lap. "What are you doing?"

"Playing a game," she told him without looking up.

He watched from that position, silently, for a couple levels, noting the way she shivered every time his breath hit her neck.

"You just have to kill all the little green things?"

She made a sound of disgust. "Don't say _kill;_ that's so morbid. You pop them."

"How is that better?"

_Eye-roll._ "Here, try it." She grabbed one of his hands from his lap and drug it over to the phone.

She mimed the swiping action with his finger a few times, then let him try by himself.

_*Crash* Pop. _

She snickered. "Wow. You suck."

"It's the angle of my hand. I can't...my wrist is all bent."

"Right."

Five minutes later he had the phone in his lap and was hunched over it.

Mindy was tugging on his sleeve. "Danny! Seriously, I need that back."

"Just a second."

"Use your own phone!"

"I'm almost done with this level!"

—

"Can I ask you something else?"

Danny blinked his eyes open and turned to face Mindy, who was staring at him suspiciously.

_Here we go again._ In an hour they'd had more conversation than Danny had with his mother in a week.

"What is it?"

"What kind of conditioner do you use?"

He frowned, confused, and brought a hand to his head self-consciously. "I don't use conditioner."

She studied him with narrowed eyes. "I'm pretty sure you do. Your hair is literally glistening right now." She reached up and smoothed her fingers over it.

He ducked out of her reach. "What are you—?"

"Oh my _god_, it's so soft!"

He folded his arms over his chest, awkwardly.

"Hey, it's not an insult, man. Soft hair is good."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Just out of curiosity though, do you also use baby shampoo?"

He smirked. "No more tears."

She laughed.

—

"What do you want me to say?" Danny half-shouted.

"Tell them I died of a heat stroke!" Mindy responded, even louder.

They stood opposite each other in front of the control box. After talking for the last fifteen minutes straight they had run out of Keanu Reeves movies to discuss, and Mindy was out of patience.

"I'm not going to _lie_!"

"Danny, please, just do something!" she whined.

He shot her a begrudging scowl and grabbed his phone from his pocket, shining the light at the buttons. He found the small square intercom button. "Hello?"

Silence.

He tried again. "Is anyone there?"

Mindy's eyes widened. "Why aren't they answering?"

"I told you, they're probably busy." He cleared his throat and tried once more, in a much louder voice. "Can anyone hear me?"

They held their breath and waited for a full minute.

"Fuck!" Mindy whispered. "We're going to die in here. My last words will have been spent talking to you about The Matrix movie! And not even the good one!"

"Will you relax?" He set his hands on her shoulders and tried to catch her darting gaze.

She finally looked at him.

"We're going to be fine," he told her slowly.

He caught a whiff of her perfume, then, and it smelled overwhelmingly sweet. The mood in the air seemed to shift.

His eyes dropped down to her mouth and lingered. Their faces were barely a foot apart, the room was dark; it felt like a moment right out of one of her ridiculous movies.

"Danny?" she whispered in a solemn voice.

He nodded.

"Will you…will you do me a favor?"

"Sure," he breathed, suddenly nervous.

She took a shaky, deep breath. "I have The Garbage Pail Kids movie on DvD in a shoe box in my closet."

_Wait, what?_ "Okay… Why are you—?"

"If I die in some freak elevator accident, will you burn it before they start going through my stuff?"

He stared at her blankly for a second, then let out a sharp laugh. He shook his head. "Mindy…"

She was staring up at him with big eyes, her lips parted, a strand of _very short_ hair shaken loose and falling over her face.  
He suddenly — or maybe it wasn't so all of a sudden — wanted to grab her and kiss her right on the mouth.

"Yeah," he muttered instead, and squeezed her shoulders once before dropping his hands. "Sure."

—

The lights came back on around an hour and a half in, the same time they finally made contact with the operator. He informed them that there was a maintenance crew on the job, but they would be stuck for at least another hour. Mindy had to call _Jeff_ and explain why she wasn't showing up to their date.

Then they hit the hundred-minute mark.

Mindy was lying on her back in the middle of the floor, with her eyes pinched shut.

Danny was lying beside her with his hands on his chest, staring at the ceiling, thinking.  
The silence was nice.

She kept bumping her arm or leg against his, and it was sending a weird tingle up his body.  
She had that effect on him a lot: whether she was touching him, or talking to him, or just looking at him... It was frustrating how much she could make him _feel_ even when he didn't want to.

She wiggled a little beside him. "Danny, no offense, but you breathe like...an asthmatic pug. You're sucking up all the air in here."

He frowned. "I'm breathing normal."

Mindy sighed.

"Hey…I'm sorry about your date."

She waved a hand at him dismissively, her gaze still on the ceiling. "It's fine. We can reschedule."

He nodded.

"What about you? Have to cancel any big plans?"

"No. I was going to go home, take a shower. Sort out my socks maybe."

She was quiet for a minute, then brought a fist up to her mouth and half-stifled a giggle.

"What? What's the joke?"

"Nothing, just…sorting your socks. I'm trying to picture you doing domestic, Martha Stewart stuff. Like standing in your kitchen, in boxers, loading the dishwasher."

"I do the dishes in my boxers in your head?"

"No, because like...after you get up, but before you get dressed..."

"How does that make sense?"

"It's a weird image," she agreed.

Danny smirked. "What do you wear when you do housework?"

"Nothing."

He jerked his head toward her in surprise.

A little too hard, it turned out, and their skulls collided.

She shrieked. "_Owe_! God!"

"Sorry! Shit."

She stood up quickly and brought a palm to her face. "That hurt like hell!"

Danny stood, too, and threw his hands up. "Well don't say stuff like that, then!"

"I make a joke so you head-butt me?"

He grabbed her face with both hands, and rubbed his thumbs across her cheeks, like he was wiping away invisible marks. "You're fine."

"Are you sure you didn't break my nose? It feels…" She pinched the bridge of her nose and grimaced. "It hurts."

He took her wrist and pulled it away. "Well don't touch it, then."

"I think I bit my lip too," she muttered.

He slid his hand down her face to cup her jaw and ran his thumb over her bottom lip. Her breath caught.

"Feels fine," he mumbled.

She looked up at him with wide eyes. "Are you sure?"

He swallowed hard. He only saw _Sleepless in Seattle_ once, his romance movie knowledge was limited, but this was definitely the part where he was supposed to make a move. _  
_

He bent his head down, replaced his thumb with his mouth and kissed her gently.

She shivered against him. _  
_

He pulled away and studied her face for a reaction. "Better?"

She nodded, eyes wide, and he slid his hands around her neck and pulled her face into his again for a second, harder kiss. This time it was passionate and messy.

When he slipped his tongue past her lips she sighed, a soft breathy sound that made him hard.

_This is happening,_ he thought, only half-aware.

In one smooth move he spun them around so she was firmly against a wall, and hooked one of her legs over his hip. She moaned as the position caused his pelvis to press against her.

He had one hand all the way up her dress while using the other one to make a tear at the top of her tights so he could grip the skin of her thigh when she abruptly pulled away.

They both took a sharp breath.

"Hey!" she squeaked.

"What?" Danny asked, a hand still sitting under her bra cup, palming her breast.

"You just ruined my tights!"

He shook his head disbelievingly. "Seriously? I'll buy you new ones."

"You can't just go out and _buy_ these, Danny! I got them online for half off, and they're my only black pair with this cool pattern, see?"

She sounded like she could go on for another ten minutes, but Danny had more important things in mind. He wrapped his free arm around her waist, pulled her into him and kissed her quiet.

After a minute of making out, they separated so they could strip off their clothes: her dress first, then his shirt, then her unmentionables and shredded tights.

She undid his pants and slid them down his legs. He groaned into her neck as she wrapped her hand around his cock.

"Fuck, Min."

He didn't let it last for long before he had to be inside of her, and grabbed her thighs and wrapped them around his waist.

He looked hesitantly at her one last time. "Is this...can I...?"

She bit her lip and nodded.

With a hard thrust he entered her, _finally_.

She whimpered his name, and he cursed under his breath.

The feeling was, physically, overtaking; she was tight, and wet; her soft flesh was perfect under his hands… but the feeling, _emotionally_, was almost more than he could handle.

He hadn't realized how badly he wanted this, wanted _her_, and it was alarming how right it all felt.

They quickly ended on the floor in their passion, her lying underneath him.

He knew he wouldn't last much longer so he clutched her breast with one hand while the other slid between her legs.

As soon as she climaxed, moaning, under him, he was finished. He thrust hard a couple more times, then made a high, desperate whimper as he came.

When he could see straight again, he took a second to admire the view in front of him.

Mindy's dark, soft skin completely exposed…her flushed face, and lust-glazed eyes.

He was ridiculously grateful for broken elevators, at that moment.

He collapsed on top of her, his head between her breasts, her hands in his hair.  
They laid there for a few minutes, panting.

"Wow." Her voice was high; tremulous.

"Uhuh."

Their breathing evened out, eventually.

Danny propped himself up on his elbows so he could meet her eyes, and smirked.

"What?" she asked.

"You can't do that thing at the office where you lay on the floor anymore."

She frowned. "Why?"

He looked down at her state of undress pointedly. "Unless you want me to fuck you on my desk."

She gasped. "Danny!"

He grinned, and kissed her hard, just because he could now. He was already getting used to that. God, he hoped this wasn't a one time thing.

They only made out for a healthy two minutes before separating to slip their clothes back on. They were in an elevator, after all, and —

"Oh my _god_," Mindy muttered as she finished zipping her dress. Her face went pale, and she grabbed Danny's forearm.

He paused, mid-buttoning his wrinkled shirt, and gave her a puzzled look. "What?"

"Danny. Danny, Danny, Danny!"

He grabbed her shoulder. "Min, _what_?"

"_Danny_. There's a camera in here!"

He glanced up at the corner of the ceiling and there was a round, black security camera pointing down at them.

"Shit."

Mindy grabbed her face and moaned. "Oh my god."

"Listen, I'm sure no one was —"

"Of course they were! And now we're tomorrow's headline, and the practice is going to go down in history as '_hey, remember those two doctors who got caught boning in an elevator there?' _What if we get fired?"

"Who's going to fire us?"

"Oh. Right."

"Listen, this is New York City. The Burger King here sells _pizza_, okay?"

"You have to get over that. It's not that interesting."

"I'm just saying, people have better things to talk about here than us..." He wasn't sure how to end the sentence. _Us what?_ Were they _together_ now? Was he allowed to ask?

Mindy gave an unsure sigh but resumed dressing. "Just so you know, if you're wrong, I'm going to say you roofied me."

"_What_? That's — we weren't on a date! You didn't drink anything. No one would buy that."

"We'll see."

—

Their total elevator time was a hundred and sixty minutes.

_Jed Clampett_ came through the speakers eventually one last time, to let them know everything was in order, and the car would bring them safely to the main floor.

When they stepped out of the doors they were hit with a burst of fresh, cool air.

Danny knew that no one saw anything, that the footage from those cameras probably hadn't been viewed for years, and that Mindy was just overreacting — but he could have swore one of the repairmen winked at him as they were walking out.

They reached the sidewalk without speaking a word to each other. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his coat and turned to face her — she had her bottom lip between her teeth, and was looking up at the sky. She was exuding nervousness. He was, too.

"Listen," she said, and turned to face him. "What happened in there was..."

_Oh god. _He felt his heart drop. She was about to brush everything under the carpet.

"I just think we shouldn't let that affect anything," she was saying.

But being with her felt too good to let it stop just because she was scared.

"Honestly it's not a big deal. So we had sex? We're adults, we —"

Her sentence ended in a squeak when he grabbed her by the hips and tugged her to him, kissing her quiet for the second time that night. He decided right then that maybe, sometimes, that was the only way to deal with Mindy Lahiri.

"Shut up," he told her when they finally pulled apart.

He took her hand then, and caught them a cab.

She held his hand without protest when he gave the cabbie his address, and when he led her up his sidewalk, and into his building: but when he brought them to his elevator she pulled her hand away and took a step back.

"Danny, wait. I don't think we should —"

"Mindy, stop." He smoothed his hand over his hair, then down his face, exasperatedly. "Listen, I know this isn't…I know we're not…but you make me _happy_, Lahiri. Annoyingly happy. And not just the —" he lowered his voice and stepped closer. "Not just the sex just now. I mean all the time. With your ridiculous outfits, and your stupid movies..."

She opened her mouth to speak her riposte but he didn't give her the chance.

"If you don't want this, then…" He waved a hand. "But if I can make you happy too; if you want us to be, I don't know, _something_, then I think we should at least try."

He took a deep breath. He said his stuff, now it was pretty much up to her.

"Okay. I'm done. Go ahead," he told her, feeling both hopeful and terrified.

She grinned at him. "First of all, my outfits are _fabulous_, Castellano. And secondly, I was just going to say maybe we should take the stairs."

Danny felt happier then than he could remember feeling for a long, long time.

—

—

—

**ALL THE CHEESE. Sorry. I hope you liked it anyway!**


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